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Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Simplicity and luxury

When you live simply, it’s amazing
how much more you appreciate the small things in life. For example, when you
have to hand-wash and line-dry your laundry, you are eminently grateful for a
hot, dry day that leaves your sheets crisp by lunchtime. When you have to fetch
your water from a pump, you’re thrilled when it finally rains and makes the
pump run at full strength. When it’s 105 degrees out and you’ve been walking around
all day, there’s nothing quite as refreshing as finding an epicerie with a fridge and being able to indulge in a small, cold
bottle of Coke. When you’ve spent a hot day biking on dusty back roads, a cold
bucket bath can feel every bit as luxurious as a fancy hotel shower. And when
you can only buy fruit and vegetables that are in season, it’s an unexpected
delight to find a verdant head of lettuce at the market, and take it home to
make a cool and refreshing salad.

That’s the way I’ve been living for the past 20 months, and
I can already tell that it’s changed the way I’ll live forever after, even when
I get home to America. Specifically, it’s made me realize that to live
comfortably and happily, you don’t need a lot. It dawned on me recently that
despite living in a “hardship” situation, I don’t feel deprived. I have a small
two-room house with electricity, a garden and a lovely backyard, a bicycle, an
old but usable laptop, and enough money to feed myself, buy phone and internet
credit, and travel around the country a bit. Yes, there are difficulties and
things that are uncomfortable, but as a
whole, I don’t feel as if I am suffering every time I wake up in the morning
and go about my day.

Perhaps this has something to do with a shift in
expectations. I’ve come to realize that in the non-Western world, not everything
in life is easy. Maybe the person you need to talk to doesn’t have cell phone
reception in his town—so you ride your bike there to go talk to him. Or maybe
you have to wait 2 hours for your taxi-brousse
to finally leave the station—so you read a book and talk to people while
you wait. I’m used to it now. In Western countries, however, everything is
hard-wired for comfort and easiness—where all you need to do laundry is press a
button, and a single grocery store holds every possible food item you could
ever want to buy, at all times. So after 2+ years of living in Madagascar, I’m
expecting to be in for a serious reverse culture shock when I return home in
May.

What I’ve realized since being here is that real luxuries are the things we take for
granted in America: things like ice cream (I marvel at its very existence
now—the fact that ice cream can be shipped and sold all over the country!);
bacon and pancakes on a Sunday morning; owning a car, no matter how old and
beat-up; all the way to microwaves, fridges, computers, iPods, iPhones, running
hot and cold water, and reliable electricity. Reading this you may find
yourself asking, but at point what does
it become a necessity? Isn’t electricity a necessity? The simple answer is,
no, it’s not. Although I’m a fortunate volunteer in that I have electricity in
my house, few of my neighbors do, and almost none of the other volunteers in my
region do, either. And they all survive. It’s entirely possible to cook and eat
healthfully without a fridge. And fetching water from a pump is not as dreadful
as it sounds. This is not to say that I won’t enjoy these amenities when I
return to America, but I think I’ll appreciate them more now that I understand
how fortunate I’ll be to have them.

One thing that’s helped me appreciate my existence here is realizing
that the same simple things I found pleasurable home in the US are achievable
(and just as pleasurable) here—things such as climbing into a bed with clean
sheets after a nighttime shower, eating perfectly ripe, in-season, fresh fruit,
sitting outside and enjoying the afternoon breeze, breaking open the creamy
yellow yolk of a perfectly-poached egg, indulging in a long talk with a friend,
relaxing with a book (and maybe nodding off) in a hammock, enjoying an
unhurried cup of morning coffee, the smell of tomatoes on my fingers after
working in the garden, and the comforting and cocooned feeling one gets from
being warm and dry at home while a rainstorm pounds down outside.

Being here has clarified to me that little things like these
bring me great happiness, yet there is nothing particularly extravagant about
them. It doesn’t take a fancy car, expensive house, or top-of-the-line hotel to
make me happy. In fact, I’m finding myself more and more uncomfortable with
actual Western-style luxuries. In March I met a friend for a vacation in India,
and for our stay in Delhi, I cashed in some of my hotel points (accumulated in
my previous life) so we could treat ourselves to a stay in a fancy hotel. But I
found myself overwhelmed by the niceness of it, and unnerved by being called “Ms.
Silman” and having my luggage carried for me. What is going on? I asked myself, this is not me! I’m a Peace Corps volunteer! And things got even
more bizarre for me when we booked a car and a driver to take us sightseeing
after a disastrous attempt at using local taxis: when the car pulled up that
morning to pick us up, it was (much to my surprise) a Mercedes, which I
guiltily sat in all day, enjoying it but feeling quite out of place.

So perhaps there is something singularly attractive about
coming to a largely unspoiled and un-Westernized country, like Madagascar, in
order to gain perspective on what is truly important and valuable in life. I
encountered a poignant description of another such journey in a book I just
finished about the British writer and MI6 spy Graham Greene. (Thanks to Eric
for passing it my way). The book depicts the author’s attempt to recreate
Greene’s famous journey through Sierra Leone and Liberia nearly 100 years ago,
and spends a significant amount of time going over Greene’s motivations for
undertaking the adventurous trip. Greene went to Africa, in part, because he
was becoming disgusted with the British “civilization” that was supposedly so
wonderful and worth exporting to other countries, but within which he found, as
the author remarks, a disheartening amount of “seediness”.Greene wrote about his disillusionment in his
book Journey Without Maps, which is
the work that came out of his trek through Liberia and Sierra Leone. Greene’s writings
in Journey Without Maps:

“...
reveal his distrust of the ‘civilisation’ represented by contemporary Britain
and the developed world, and to justify the desire to go somewhere more base,
pure, and unspoiled.... he found among the native tribes of the Liberian
interior the existence of characteristics he saw as more admirable and honest—a
sense of innocence, simplicity, even virginity that accentuated natural
feelings, both good or bad.”

-Tim
Butcher, “Chasing the Devil: A Journey Through West Africa in the Footsteps of
Graham Greene”

Perhaps I have a similar disillusionment with many aspects
of the ‘progress’ that modern American culture symbolizes. We are supposed to
be so advanced, so forward, the most successful nation in the world—yet we
spend hours upon hours toiling behind desks at the expense of time with friends
and family, simply to finance a lifestyle which American culture tells us we
must have. There are many cultures that would question whether a lifestyle like
that really is a definition of success. Here in Madagascar, people work
extremely hard, but family comes first. It is not uncommon for people to miss a
business meeting or important event because a family member has fallen ill or
needs assistance. Of course there are some Western developments that I would
like to see more widely adopted in Madagascar—such as greater economic
development, improved education and equality for girls and women, more appreciation
and protection for the environment, and an increase in family planning—but I
would never want Madagascar to emulate every aspect of American culture. This country may be poor, but it’s rich in a
lot of things that we’re not.

My college thesis (which this blog gets its URL from) dealt
with the ideal of Arcadia, as propagated by Virgil and then many subsequent
artists and writers. Without getting into too much detail, the Arcadian ideal
is one of an untouched natural paradise that is free from the formal
constraints of man-made law and societal structures. And because of this, it
becomes a haven for artistic thought and creativity. Virgil and his followers
talked of a mythical land—whether real or imagined—where shepherds wrote poetry
and sang love songs in the unspoiled natural beauty of their surroundings. This
verdant, uncivilized utopia was so prized precisely because of its roughness
and ruggedness; man’s constructs and the ‘advancements’ of modern society were
seen as the enemy. When I read that passage in “Chasing the Devil”, I finally
created a link between this famous Arcadian ideal, which I devoted years to
studying, and the timeless yearning, as exemplified by Greene and many others,
to come to non-Westernized countries in Africa and elsewhere to discover
another, more authentic way of life.

Should I be including myself among those “many
others”? When I left America to come to Madagascar, it wasn’t exactly motivated
by a similar desire to flee Western civilization. But maybe my time here has
uncovered that as a small, subconscious inspiration for my decision to join
Peace Corps. With 4 months left in my service, I am eagerly awaiting returning
home, but I’m also a bit scared, and unsure if I will be able to live the way I
used to. I might find myself one of those people who needs to be living abroad,
or someone who always has to be moving from place to place. Or perhaps I’ll
easily settle back into the familiar contours of American life. If one thing is
for certain right now, it’s that I have no idea how it will play out. But no matter where my life takes me after this, I
know I’ll be able to look at my experience in Madagascar with reverence and
appreciation for all the gifts it has given me, not least of which is an ability
to live simply and appreciate life’s small and precious joys.

7 comments:

Can I just say the you helped me decide on whether or not to accept my invitation to Madagascar? I was very hesitant about it, because I was told Eastern Europe for the whole process, and got Madagascar. Reading your posts and watching your videos has definitely helped me make my decision! So thanks! I'm so excited to start my journey as a PCV in Madagascar!

Thank you Elena! That really made my week to hear. I know, my Madagascar invitation threw me for a bit of a loop too, although my original nomination wasn't quite as different as yours (I was supposed to go to French-speaking west Africa). I like to think that I was sent here for a reason, and I've tried to embrace the opportunity to live in this unique and magical country. I think you will love it and I'm glad to hear that you accepted your invitation! Are you coming in the health/agriculture stage in February, or are you in the next education stage that arrives in June?

I'm the next education stage in June! So I'm kind of just reading some blogs, getting my medical stuff done, and listening the the audio language lessons! I've already started my packing lists, because I have so.much.stuff, that when I actually start packing, I'll be able to do it with as (hopefully) little frustration as possible.

I do have a question for you though! The FPCV Facebook group recommends bringing and unlocked smart phone, because PC will give you a sim card? Is this true? Because the group is full of FUTURE volunteers, and I just wanted to ask someone that is there right now! (:

Well my first recommendation would be to pare down your items to pack as much as possible! I was in the same boat and I definitely had too much unnecessary stuff when I get here. You really don't need a lot.... which I know is hard to comprehend looking at from America, but you will get here and realize (as I mentioned in this blog post) that you can live very well while still living very simply. Regarding a phone, PC won't give you a SIM card but you will buy one to use when you get here. Either you will buy a cheap phone here to use it in, or if you bring an unlocked smart phone then you can use it in that, and as a bonus, will be able to access mobile internet by buying data credit. I have an old iPhone 3GS that I got unlocked in the US (this part is essential) and I put a local SIM card here, so I use it as my primary phone.

About Me

About this blog

I'll be posting about my Peace Corps adventures as often as I have internet access. (Probably about once a month.)

The opinions expressed in this blog are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Peace Corps or the U.S. government.

The URL, in case you're curious, is (nearly) the English translation of the famous Latin phrase "Et in Arcadia ego", which roughly translates to "I am in Arcadia also". The explanation of what this means took me an entire thesis to write, so I'll just sum it up by saying that it basically means that we are all mortal and our time on earth is precious and short-- something I try to remind myself of every day.